There never seemed to be enough time. The work was accelerating. I think
the Bureau was pleased by my progress. Certainly we had received generous
funding in the last few quarters, and god knows that was unusual given their
usual pinched purse. I'd been working double shifts ten days of every
fortnight, and would have done more, but they finally put their foot down and
said you've got to go home, the union is going to have our balls.

Not that I cared much about that. I just wanted to work. I used to want to
go home, and in some ways I still did, but it got tiring after a while,
always being in the wrong. It was easier to just play the dutiful husband,
and sound as if I was glad the Garden Committee on Major was finally coming
round. Our home had been written up in all the local journals; I think
Callie was aiming for bigger guns. The Geographic Society was scheduled to
visit next year and she was working overtime with her specimans, making them
bigger and more beautiful, she said. Garnish, I thought, but I kept it to
myself.

Well, if that's what made her happy, so be it. If I couldn't - well, that
was the fate of many husbands, wasn't it. Jerrica - she hates me to call her
Jerry, now that she's fifteen - used to share my dreams. All that ended when
I met Val. Oh, all right, not when I *met* Val - Callie would purse her lips
at that - but after our weekend. The Weekend. One lousy accidental weekend
that I didn't even mean to happen. God knows I've heard enough about that
weekend to fill a dozen journals.

So I'm filling my own journals now, with notes both meticulous and dreary.
Work upon work upon work. It used to be my dream, you know. Jerry and I
talked about it all the time when she was little, when she'd come with me to
the lab and let me measure her and test her and we'd compare notes and giggle
about someday... Someday.

I just wanted to go, that's all. The thrill of discovery - and of being a
vital part of that - that fed me for years. I was planning the whole time I
served my appenticeship. If I racked up enough credits, enough brown points
with BuPers, and kept adding to that impressive string of credentials, they'd
have to notice. They were starting to. I would've been assigned to the
Potemkin, if I'd kept my nose clean. If I'd... well.

I didn't quite make the grade. Even in this day and age, with increased
funding and unrest on all the borders, they're still pretty selective if you
aren't born and bred to the trade. So I do my research, and I expand the
database as best I'm able, and if I still can't do in situ work, well, I can
always fall back on the brain I know best: my own. And I've got a
federation full of history and exobiology and research to draw from.

I hear there are some potential candidates at the closest starbase. Which is
good, because I'm heading there on my own credits, and they aren't infinite.
Not with a teenage daughter and a wife who wants to impress - somebody, I've
never been sure who. I guess I wasn't good enough in that department, even
if it's my name on the Senior Chair's door now.

So I'll head out to DS9 next week, and I'll do my interviews, and if I have
to, when they send the prototype out next year, it'll bear the imprint of one
Lewis Zimmermann, M.D., Ph.D, Soc.D.S., physician extraordinaire. If I can't
go, maybe my doppelganger can.

I hope he enjoys himself. If that's even possible.

I hope he keeps his nose clean.

* * *

She is deep in thought when I finish the story. "Thank you, Chakotay." She says finally. It's the last thing I had expected to hear.